Disunity is making it difficult to impossible to deal with the terrorism we see happening all around us. My late father used to caution us that everything should be done in moderation. We were told to approach important decisions with care by weighing every action, looking at all the evidence, and considering all the options. He could not countenance reckless abandon. The fight against terrorism is being hampered severely by a reckless disregard for the truth, an inability to face the facts, a naiveté about the source of terrorism and a lot of propaganda that has politicized terrorism in ways inimical to finding viable solutions. The situation is being made worse by those whose inability to comprehend the dangers have them splitting hairs with their own and thus preventing any joint decisions that need to be reached. During past threats to our way of life in previous generations individuals, leaders and countries came together to confront the enemy but now we come together to comfort the enemy.

I have observed that some people these days lash out against their own society, against people who are clearly on their side, not because they disagree with the positions of their fellow citizens but because they just want to be disagreeable. Instead of finding minor differences to exploit and then tearing into other people to establish dominance, they should be forming alliances and coming to some common goals and understanding. The self-righteous are carving out untenable and dangerous positions when they ought to be building bridges with those of similar viewpoints. Only unified can citizens oppose the people who do not share our love for civilization and have proven that they want to replace civilization with barbarism. For some individuals, ego supersedes truth. Instead of confronting the enemy directly with any effect, people take out their frustrations and, unfortunately, find targets among those friendly to their cause and supportive of their beliefs (or supportive of their freedom to practice those beliefs).

I am concerned more than ever about unity because at no time in recent memory have the good guys been so confused and divided and the bad guys so unified. Arguments over tactics and stratagem can be very divisive. We must agree on who is on our side and who is against us. The Toronto Board of Rabbis recently condemned freedom fighter Pamela Geller and lashed out at the Jewish community that brought her in to speak. The Board sided with the York Region Police in Ontario who found Geller’s views against jihad and sharia unacceptable. Both law enforcement and the Toronto Rabbis backed the jackboot tactics of a politicized police force to keep her away from a chabad where she was scheduled to speak. She was then re-invited to the Zionist Center to speak. Thus Geller accomplished an end run around those who believe that blinding our communities to the truth will somehow make us less vulnerable, less targeted and more safe and secure. The Toronto Rabbis and the police are both wrong in their views, working to divide the community, thereby strengthening the radicals. This is but one more example, as if we needed any more, of a lack of unity and a complete lack of sense with regard to confronting the dangers we now face.

U.S. President Barack Obama is surely the major voice of political correctness in the western world and an expert at playing down the threats of Islam. He has made a point of diverting our attention away from the necessity of modernizing Islam (for Muslim’s sake and ours). Obama is identifying the entire terror enterprise as one group, al Qaeda, as if other groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others were merely freedom fighters and major components of the solution. It is obvious that Obama is supporting al Qaeda in Syria and Libya and simultaneously supporting the Muslim Brotherhood wherever it exists. Obama’s solution is to con Americans into thinking that terror is coming from only a small subset of Islam which he characterizes as a criminal element disconnected from the faith itself. Society has solutions designed for criminals but because we are dealing with Islamic-based terror, standard anti-criminal deterrents and methods have no impact on jihadists. The problem is mostly in Islamic texts and the solution will come through discussing and criticizing those texts and adherents who cling to the worst passages to bolster and justify their jihad. There is presently no distance between the darkness of the texts and the darkness of the terror and that is where we must shine the spotlight.

We are being told by a variety of political sources, including the United Nations (UN), not to mention the truth of who belongs to the enemy camp. Our soldiers and intelligence officers are not being taught the reality of Islam. Under such circumstances, it is very difficult for anyone in the business of countering Islamist threats to establish who is and who is not a jihadist. Terrorists with evil intentions are able to mingle with those on our side undetected because we do not know what to look for; in fact, we are being told not to look or to look the other way. Some people tend to blow up small insignificant differences of opinion on the good side into major diversions which avoid getting to the source of the problem of identifying those whom we must defend ourselves against.

There are people who obfuscate to avoid action and to show off their political correctness. They tend to be politicians like the current Liberal Party leader in Canada, Justin Trudeau, who thinks that there are societal, socio-economic and political issues and reasons why terrorists want to attack us — but not religious reasons. They would rather blame victims than name the enemy and discover that the root cause is Islam. This large constituency is well-financed by international Islamic countries and the Left in general. While the politicians spread inanities, the jihadists grow stronger and more resolute in their determination to instill terror into the hearts of civilized people. Let’s be very clear: People who follow Islam to the letter and slit other people’s throats in the streets of their western neighborhoods are the enemy and must be confronted militarily, morally and intellectually. We all need to be involved in this fight which has been delivered to our doorsteps with hatred for humanity and a bloody harsh directive to conquer us all.

Recently we have witnessed many very dangerous developments culminating last week in a beheading and disembowelment of a young British soldier who had served with distinction in Afghanistan. He was murdered by jihadists — not in Afghanistan but in central London. What struck me about the scene in the video recording of the event was how members of the Islamic community passed by unperturbed by the savagery; with the warm blood of the British soldier Lee Rigby still dripping from his knife-wielding hands. I was also amazed by the theatre of the macabre that the terrorists created by using the street scene as their backdrop and members of the community as bit players on a bloody city stage dominated by Islamic terrorists. One Islamic woman passed right by one of the terrorists with complete faith and confidence that his war was her war too — a war against the country which generously and open-heartedly provided her a home, health care, and a good life in a free country — including freedom of religion. She felt safe rubbing up against a jihadist just having completed his murderous, gory attack on a British soldier. The terrorists and many same-minded people in that community must be unified in the belief that their war against civilization is one and the same — for Allah and shouted out in the streets with the glorious triumphal exclamation, “Allahu Akbar!!” (“my god is the greatest.”) The media are curiously not in agreement as to who did this, why they did it, and then they look for causes in our treatment of people who would carry out such a “crime.”

We did, however, witness one woman with the sense and courage to confront the second savage by explaining to him that he would not win and that he stood alone and isolated against many — but as brave an act as that was by a non-Muslim to confront the Muslim terrorist, what she told him was not completely true in London, a city where a pro-Islamist, anti-Semitic former mayor, Ken Livingstone, spent eight years in office. Officials like Livingston and Islamic imams are the enablers, instructors and propagandists, emboldening followers of Islam and giving them all the backing and support they need to justify their jihad. When people are all pumped up with hate for the infidels, it does not take much to satisfy their need for excuses and to offer them and their followers comfort for killing us; excuses involving U.S./British foreign policy, Israel or the illegitimacy of anyone who sets foot in any land that Islam wants as part of the Ummah (the Muslim community). Now all of Europe is part of the Ummah and because Muslims were once conquerors in parts of Europe, in the minds of Muslims, it is officially theirs for eternity.

Getting back to this concept of unity, we are in trouble from all sides: the Left, the Right and Islam. We have leftist Rabbis in Toronto shooting down a brave messenger and educator (Pamela Geller) because her voice seems too filled with truth and her warning too discomforting and too troubling for their dialogue-rich agendas. We have the Left pushing to make criticism of Islam or even saying the truth about Islam a crime. For example, pointing out the violent passages of their holy books or blaming a person with an Islamic name as part of a terror plot might soon be classified as a hate crime. We see the Republicans now shying away from attacking jihad because they might lose votes in communities that are being inundated by Islamists. There is no longer any political capital in supporting Israel. Some people are sowing the seeds of division through their own ignorance of the prevailing threat. They will do anything to deny that the threat is a major religion spreading hate within mosques that drill perverse sentiments into their people at every opportunity. In the pampered Western world, if the message is hard to understand, discomforting and solutions seemingly impossible, we tend to divert our eyes, close our minds and blame ourselves. Terrorists are exploiting our goodness, our innocence (naiveté) and our freedoms. Most of all, they are exploiting our disunity.